The sentence which had attracted the King's attention, coming as it did from the newspaper on whose opinions he most frequently relied, ran thus—

"In this developing crisis the Nation looks with complete and loyal assurance to him who alone stands high and independent above all parties, confident that when the time for a final decision has arrived he will so act, within the recognized limits of the Royal Prerogative, as to add a fresh luster and a renewed significance to that supreme symbol and safeguard of the popular will which, under Divine Providence, still crowns our constitutional edifice."

The King read it three times over. He read it both standing and sitting: and read in whatever attitude it certainly sounded well. As a peroration its rhythm and flow were admirable, as a means of keeping up the courage and confidence of readers who placed their reliance mainly upon literary style nothing could be better; but what, by all that was constitutional, did it mean?—or rather, how did it mean that he, the high and independent one, was to do it? Point by point its sentiments were unexceptionable; but what it actually pointed to he did not know. "Add luster?" Why, yes, certainly. But was not that what he was already doing day by day on the continuous deposit system, even as the oyster within its shell deposits luster upon the pearls which a sort of hereditary disease has placed within its keeping? "Renewed significance?" But in what respect had the significance of the royal office become obscured? Was anything that he did insignificant? "Symbol and safeguard of the popular will?" Yes: if his Coronation oath meant anything. But how was he, symbol and safeguard and all the rest of it, to find out what the popular will really was? No man in all the Kingdom was so much cut off from living contact with the popular will as was he!

The King was in his study, the room in which most of the routine work of his daily life was accomplished—a large square chamber with three windows to one side looking out across a well-timbered park toward a distant group of towers. But for those towers, so civic in their character, it might well have been taken for a country view; scarcely a roof was visible.

Upon a large desk in the center of the chamber lay a pile of official letters and documents awaiting his perusal; and he knew that in the adjoining room one of his private secretaries was even now attending his call. But from none of his secretaries could he learn anything about the popular will.

He walked to a window and stood looking out into the soft sunlit air, slightly misty in quality, which lay over the distances of his capital. Away behind those trees, beneath those towers, sending toward him a ceaseless reverberation of bells, wheels, street cries, and all the countless noises of city life, went a vast and teeming population of men and women, already far advanced on the round of their daily toil. He was in their midst, but not one of them could he see; and not one of them did he really know as man to man. Everything that he learned about their lives came to him at second or at third hand; nor did actual contact bring him any closer, for wherever he moved among them they knew who he was and behaved accordingly. For twenty-five years he had not walked in a single one of those streets the nearest of which lay within a stone's throw of his palace. As a youth, before his father came to the throne, he had sometimes gone about, with or without companions, just like an ordinary person, taking his chance of being recognized: it had not mattered then. But now it could not be done: people did not expect it of him; his ministers would have regarded it as a dangerous and expensive habit, requiring at least a trebling of the detective service, and even then there would always have been apprehension and uncertainty. He was King; and though, whatever might happen to him, his place would be automatically filled, and government go on just as before, yet, as a national symbol, his life was too valuable to be risked; and so on ascending the throne he had been forced, as his father before him, to resign his personal liberty and cease to go out in the happy, unpremeditated fashion of earlier days.

He had long since got over the curious home-sickness which this separation had at first caused him, and as an opening to personal enjoyment the impulse for freedom had long since died within him; but his heart still vaguely hungered for the people who called him their King; and looking out into the pale sunshine that was now thinly buttering the surface of his prosperous capital, and listening to the perpetual tick and hum of its busy life, he knew that for him it was and must remain, except in an official sense, an unknown territory. And yet out there, in that territory which he was unable to explore, the thing that is called "the popular will" lived and moved and had its being! Dimly he dreamed of what it might be—a thing of substance and form; but there was none to interpret to him his dream—except upon official lines.

Before his eyes, a salient object in the heavens surpassing the stony eminences which surrounded it, rose the tall spire of the twin Houses of Parliament. Upon its top swung a gilded weathercock; while about a portion of its base stood a maze of scaffolding, the faÇade of the building having during the last few months been under repair. There seemed, however, for the moment, to be no workmen upon it. Presently, as he gazed vacantly and without intent, something that moved upon the upper masonry engaged his attention. Slowly along its profile, out of all those hidden millions below, one of his subjects, a single and minute representative of the popular will, emerged cautiously into view.

The King was gifted with good sight; and though the figure appeared but as a tiny speck, it was unmistakably that of a man bearing a burden upon his back and ascending steadily toward the highest point of all. In a word it was a steeplejack. As the name passed through the King's mind it evoked recollection; and he said to himself again, "I wonder whether they call me Jack,—I wonder."

With a curious increase of interest and fellow-feeling he watched the distant figure mounting to its airy perch. And as he did so a yet further similitude and parable flashed through his mind. For the man's presence at that dizzy height he knew that the Board of Public Works was responsible: as a single item in the general expenditure the weathercock of the Palace of Legislature had had voted to it a new coat of gilt, and this steeplejack was now engaged in putting it on. He was there in the words of a certain morning journal, "to add fresh luster to that supreme symbol of the popular will which crowned the constitutional edifice."

As the words with their caressing rhythm flowed across the King's brain he discerned the full significance of the scene which was being enacted before him. This weathercock—the highest point of the constitutional edifice—requiring to be touched up afresh for the public eyes—was truly symbolical of the crown in its relation to the popular will; twisting this way and that responsive to and interpretative of outside forces, it had no will of its own at all, and yet to do its work it must blaze resplendently and be lifted high, and to be put in working trim and kept with luster untarnished it required at certain intervals the attentions of a steeplejack—one accustomed to being in high places, accustomed to isolation and loneliness, accustomed to bearing a burden upon his back before the eyes of all: one whose functions were rather like his own.

He saw that the steeplejack had now reached the point where his work was waiting for him, work that required nerve and courage. He wondered whether it were highly paid; he wondered also by what means the man slung himself into position, and by what process the new gold had to be applied so that it would stick. Perhaps he only polished up what was already there, coated and covered from view by the grime of modern industry. If so, how did he scrape off the dirt without also scraping off the gold? Perhaps, on the other hand, all the old gold had to come off before new gold could be put on. He wondered whether the man ever forgot his perilous position, whether habit did not make him sometimes careless, whether he ever felt giddy, and how far the exploit was really attended by danger to one possessed of skill and a cool head; and as he thought, putting himself in the man's place, his hands grew sympathetically moist.

Well, he was wasting time, he must really get to his own work now; that secretary would be wondering what had become of him. He glanced away over the distant roofs that here and there emerged above the trees, and then for a last look back again. And as he did so all at once he started and uttered an acute exclamation of distress. A dark speck had suddenly detached itself from the ball upon which the vane stood, and could now be seen glissading with horrible swiftness down the slope of the spire. It fell into the scaffolding, zigzagged from point to point, and disappeared. There could be no mistake about it, it was the man himself who had fallen: that single and minute expression of the popular will had passed for ever from view; and the smooth and equable hum of the unseen millions below went steadily on.

II

Fleeing from the sight still registered upon his brain the King rang for his secretary. A figure of correctitude entered.

"There has been an accident," said his Majesty. "Over there!" He pointed. "A steeplejack has fallen."

The secretary slid respectfully to the window and looked out. To that polite official gaze of inquiry the scene of the tragedy returned a blank and uncommunicative stare.

"Poor wretch!" murmured the King. "I actually saw him go! Ring up, and inquire at the Police Center; though, of course, the poor fellow must be dead!"

The secretary sped away on his errand, and the King, moving back to the window, gazed fixedly at the spire, as though it could still in some way inform him of the tragedy consummated below. Then he returned to his desk and looked distractedly at his papers, but it was no use—back he went to the window again.

Presently the secretary returned and stood drooping for permission to speak. Permission came. "The man is dead, your Majesty. He was killed instantly."

The King gave a sigh of relief. "Of course," he murmured, "from such a height as that!" He stood for a while still cogitating on the sad event: then he said, with that considerate thoughtfulness which habit had made a second nature, "Be good enough to find out whether the poor fellow was married. If so let a donation be sent to his widow,—whatever the case seems to warrant—more if there should happen to be children."

Over his tablets the secretary bowed the beauty of his person like a recording angel. Then he paused that the heavenly measure might be taken with accuracy.

"Shall it be five pounds, sir?" he inquired.

"Better make it ten," said the King; "I believe that pays for a funeral. In sending it, you might explain that I had the misfortune to be an eye-witness."

The secretary cooed like a brooding dove. Of course everybody would understand and appreciate. He made a memorandum of the ten pounds and closed up his tablets.

Meanwhile the King went on thinking aloud. "I wonder," he said, "whether they take proper precautions in a trade like that? I would like to look it up. Find me the 'ST' volume of the Encyclopedia Appendica."

And when the volume was brought to him the King sat down and read all about steeplejacks and climbing irons, and cranks, and pulleys, and all the other various appliances requisite for the driving of that dreadful trade; read also how the men were inclined to prime themselves for the task in ever-increasing measure, and so one day having over-primed to be found at the bottom instead of at the top, knowing nothing themselves of how they got there. It was all very interesting and very apposite, and rather pathetic; and when he had done he turned over the pages backward till he came from steeplejacks to "Statesmen" and "Statecraft" and "Statutes" and the affairs of State in general (it was from the Encyclopedia Appendica—a presentation copy—that he got most of his information upon practical things); and in these articles he became so absorbed that he quite forgot how time flew, until his chief secretary came formally to announce to him that the hour for appearing in Council had arrived.

This announcement, be it observed, was made by no ordinary working secretary, but by the chief of them all, the Comptroller of his Majesty's household, a retired general who had passed from the military to the civil service with a record brilliantly made for him by other men—adjutants and attachÉs and all those indefatigable right-hand assistants of whom your true diplomatist forms his stepping-stones to power. General Poast and the Prime Minister shared between them the ordering and disposal of the King's public services to the Nation, while over other departments impenetrable to the Premier the hand of the Comptroller was still extended. Though personally the King rather disliked him, he had become an absolutely indispensable adjunct to the daily life—so smooth in its workings, yet so easily dislocated—of the Royal Household; also, as a go-between for ministers whose intercourse with the Crown was purely formal, he had proved himself a very efficient implement when on occasion it became necessary to circumvent or reduce to reason the King's characteristic obstinacy in small matters of detail. He might, in fact, be regarded as the keeper not so much of the King's conscience, as of his savoir faire, and of that tact for which Royalty in all countries is conspicuous. Everything that related to the remembering of names and faces, of dates, anniversaries and historical associations, all those small considerate actions of royal charity which robbed of their due privacy have now become the perquisite of the press; all these things stood ranged under minutely tabulated heads within the Comptroller-General's department. He was, literally, the King's Remembrancer; and so, on this occasion also, he had come as intermediary to remind his Majesty that the hour for the Council was at hand.

But the Council was one of those functions in which it was held necessary that the part played by the King (albeit no more than a silent presidency at a Board where others spoke) should wear an appearance of importance. And so the announcement made by the Comptroller was merely preliminary to another and more flourishing announcement by an usher of the Court. Two lackeys threw open a door—other than that through which the General had just entered, and a bowing official, beautifully dressed and waving a fairy-like wand, announced from the threshold, "Your Majesty's Council, now in attendance, humbly begs audience of your Majesty."

III

Then followed a pause. The Comptroller-General with head deferentially bent waited to catch the royal eye. The King graciously allowed his royal eye to be caught; and the Comptroller-General, interpreting the silent consent of that glance, uttered with due solemnity the traditional form of words indicative of the royal pleasure. "His Majesty hears," he lowed in the correct "palace accent": and the usher bowed and retired.

All this helped, of course, to make the act of presiding in Council seem highly important and consequential to any monarch susceptible to ceremonial flattery. Whether it had originally been so devised may be questioned, for monarchs of old had needed no such ceremonial backing to their very practical incursions into ministerial debate. What we have to notice is that the ceremony had survived, while the other thing—the practice of substantial interference—had become obsolete.

The King passed from his private apartments to broad corridors and portals where resplendent footmen stood in waiting, where everything worked with silent and automatic precision to prepare the way for his feet, signaling him on from point to point as though he were a sort of special train for which the line had been expressly cleared and all other traffic shunted. And yet when he came to the small anteroom which opened directly into the Council Chamber he felt for all the world like a timid bather about to unbutton the door of his bathing-machine and step forth into a strange and hostile element. That moment of trepidation was one he never could get over,—to face his Council of Ministers was always a plunge; for here truly he felt out of his depth, aware that politically he was no swimmer. And now for a couple of hours he would have to endure while, thoroughly at home in their own element, twenty stout aquatic athletes tumbled around him.

The door was thrown open; and with an air of calm self-possession he walked to the head of the table about which his ministers stood waiting. "Be seated, gentlemen," he said, embracing in a single bow the obeisances of all; and like slow waves they closed in on him, subsiding in large curves and soft fawning ripples of hand-rubbing around the empurpled board at which nominally he was to preside.

When all were seated in order, he signed for the Prime Minister to open the proceedings, and thereafter had scarcely to speak; for at a King's Council only general reports were presented, no discussions took place, no fresh proposals were mooted; and so he sat and heard how this department or that was extending its beneficent operations, how statistics were completing to their last decimal places the prognostications of experts, and how along with these things imports and exports were balancing, trade declining, education advancing, and strikes growing every day more formidable and more popular.

It was only this last point that really interested him; for here he seemed to get a dim rumor of something that was part at least of that popular will which it was his duty to symbolize and to safeguard. But these official advisers of his were all for putting strikes down, and yet while putting them down they seemed to wish to curry favor with the strikers themselves. For on the one hand there was trade declining, if the strikes were not put down, to support fresh taxation, on the other the Labor Party, eighty strong, declining, if the strikes were put down, to support the Government. And with the Finance Act coming on the question was whether to accept an increasing deficit in the revenue or a declining majority in the Legislature. This could be read vaguely between the lines of the report presented by the Minister of the Interior. But all this time not one word was said about the coming constitutional crisis which was in everybody's mind. That had been thoroughly discussed by ministers sitting in real Council elsewhere, a Council at which the Head of the Constitution had not been present, and about which he would hear no more than the Prime Minister chose to tell him.

And so, smoothly, equably, and uneventfully the Council reached its conclusion; ministers one after another closed up their portfolios, and sitting mute in their places respectfully waited the royal word of dismissal.

Then the King rose: and all around the board the fawning ripples of hand-rubbing ceased, and the slow curving wave of the ministerial body receded to a respectful distance; while his Majesty passed forth to the adjoining chamber, there to give, as was customary, separate audience to those ministers who had any special memoranda to submit requiring the royal endorsement.

On this occasion he found his Comptroller already awaiting him, apologetic for what might seem intrusion on territory belonging more properly to the Prime Minister. Under the correctness of his deportment it was clear that urgency impelled.

"I have come, sir," he said, "to submit to your Majesty, before the matter goes further, a certain difficulty which has arisen in connection with your Majesty's gracious donation to the widow of the unfortunate workman who——" He paused.

"You mean the steeplejack?" queried the King.

The Comptroller-General bowed assent. "Your Majesty ordered inquiry to be made."

"I did. Has it been found whether he had a family?"

"A large family, sir: a wife and seven children."

"Ah," said the King, "then you would suggest that ten pounds is not quite——? Well, make it twenty."

"That, sir, is not the difficulty. The fact is we have discovered that the man was what in the industrial world is known as a 'blackleg.' As your Majesty may be aware there is at this moment a strike in the building trade: and this man was working against the orders of his Union. Under those circumstances a donation from your Majesty becomes pointed."

"Pointed at what?"

"At the Trades Unions, sir."

"But what," cried the King, astonished, "have a widow and children to do with the Trades Unions?"

"The man was working against orders, your Majesty."

"But at somebody's orders, I suppose? Anyway, it was for the Government."

"Oh no, sir!" Correctitude protested against so dangerous an implication.

"But surely! Wasn't he there at the orders of the Board of Works?"

"At the orders of the contractor, your Majesty."

"Who was under contract with the Board to complete by a certain date."

"That, sir, cannot be denied."

"Well, really then," said the King, "from what department does this objection to the donation emanate?"

"From no department, your Majesty. The objection is on general grounds of policy."

The King's pride and modesty were becoming a little hurt; he was annoyed that so small a matter of private charity should be thus canvassed and brought within the range of politics. Subconsciously he had also another and a more symbolic reason which helped him to show fight.

"Really, my dear General," he said, "I think we are discussing this matter very unnecessarily. The widow is still a widow, and the children, who you tell me number seven, are orphans; and surely at his death a man ceases to be either a blackleg or a trades unionist. He is not working against orders now, at any rate. Make it twenty! make it twenty." (His utterance grew hurried; a way he had when crossed and anxious not to have to give way.) "I can't hear anything more about it now: I have Brasshay waiting to see me." And as at that moment the Prime Minister was announced, the Comptroller-General, for the present at any rate, "made it twenty" and retired. But he did so with a wry and a determined face.

As for the King he was thoroughly put out; the steeplejack was by association beginning to assume in his mind a very particular importance; he had become a symbol not merely of the sovereign himself, but of that act of statesmanship which he had been adjured to undertake by his favorite newspaper. This man, his prototype, had failed to add in completeness that luster which he had set out to add; had even died in the attempt; and here, in seeking with all his sympathies aroused to provide for the widow and children, the King was finding himself thwarted, and thwarted, too, on purely political grounds. Well, it should be a test: he would not be thwarted. The Cabinet couldn't resign on this; so he would do as he liked! And under the table, on a soft deep carpet of velvet-pile he stuck his heels into the ground and felt very determined.

And then he found that he must attend to something else, for the Prime Minister was speaking, and now at last was speaking on a very important matter.

IV

"Your Majesty," said the Prime Minister, "the Bishops are blocking all our bills; the business of the country is at a standstill."

"Blocking?" queried the King; for he did know a little of contemporary history at all events.

"Amending," corrected the Minister. "Amending on lines which we cannot possibly accept."

"Some of them seemed to me quite excellent amendments," said the King. "But, of course, I don't know."

"They express, sir, no doubt, a point of view—quite an estimable point of view, if it were not a question of politics: they reflect, that is to say, the mind of the ecclesiastical side of the Spiritual and Judicial Chamber. Your Majesty's House of Laity sees things differently: I am bound, therefore, to submit to your Majesty certain important proposals for the relief of the impasse at which we have now arrived. As no doubt, sir, you are aware, we have the Judges, the Juridical half of the Chamber, for the most part with us, since for the last few years their appointment has been entirely in our hands. But the Bishops, with the exception of one or two, are obdurate and immovable. We select the most liberal Churchmen we can find: but it is no use; each new Bishop, adopted by Dean and Chapter, becomes when once seated in the Upper Chamber, merely a reflection of those who have gone before him: the Juridical minority is swamped, the Spiritual element remains supreme, and we have no chance of obtaining a majority."

"It is only because you will try to do things too fast!" said the King; but the Prime Minister continued—

"And now, sir, our one opportunity has come. The Bill for dividing the dioceses and doubling the number of the Bishoprics has just passed into law. I flatter myself that when the Prelates assented to that Bill they did not realize how its powers might be directed. It is the proposal of your Majesty's advisers to nominate to those Bishoprics only Free Churchmen, men whose political views coincide with our own."

"Free Churchmen!" cried the King, startled; "but they are outside the Establishment altogether."

"Merely on a point of Church discipline," answered the Prime Minister. "They are ministers properly ordained. When they seceded over the 'Church Government Act' they carried their full Canonical Orders with them: only as they had no Bishops they have become a diminishing body. Their beliefs, or their disbeliefs (for on many points the churches are merely maintaining an observance of definitions which their intellects no longer really accept)—their professed beliefs, then, shall I say?—in all matters of doctrine are not more heterogeneous than those which distract the councils and the congregations of the Establishment. It is only on matters of administration and Church discipline that they fundamentally differ. We count upon the Free Church Bishops to give us a majority both on the secularization of charities and the opening of the theological chairs and divinity degrees of our Universities to all sects and communities alike. After that we shall be in a position to deal with State Endowment and with Education generally."

"But will the Chapters, under such circumstances, accept the Crown's nominees?" inquired the King. "And even if they do, may not the Bishops refuse to consecrate them?"

"The right in law of a Dean and Chapter to reject the Crown's nominee and to substitute one of their own has already been decided against them," said the Prime Minister. "As for the consecration, if the Bishops refuse their services we have an understanding with the exiled Archimandrite of Cappadocia to see the whole thing through for us."

"Good Heavens!" cried the King, "a black man with two wives."

"His orders," said the Prime Minister, "are perfectly valid, and are recognized not only by us but by Rome. Only last year the Bishops were making quite a stir about him; there was even a proposal that he should assist at the next consecration so as to clear away all doubts in the eyes of Romanists as to the validity of our own orders. It would, therefore, be a measure of poetic justice if now——"

"I don't think we ought to do it," interrupted the King.

"If the Bishops give way in time, sir, it will be unnecessary."

"Will you consent to my seeing the Archbishop about it?" inquired the King, much perturbed.

"Sir, I have already seen him."

"Well, what did he say?"

"He said a good many things, and said them very well. His general impression seemed to be that we should not dare to do it. That is where he is mistaken."

"You have to consult me also," remarked the King.

"Sir, that is what I am now doing." The Prime Minister bowed with the utmost deference.

"You put me in a great difficulty!"

"I am sorry that your Majesty should make difficulty," retorted the Premier dryly.

"You seem to forget," pursued the King, "that I am sworn to maintain both Church and Constitution as established by law."

"Sir, we propose nothing unconstitutional."

"Free Churchmen are not constitutional, they have no standing."

"They have a right to their opinions like all the rest of your Majesty's subjects."

"Not to be made Bishops."

"That merely legalizes their position."

The King shook his head. "I don't like it," he said; "I don't like it! And if you won't let me consult the Archbishop how am I to know what I ought to do?"

"If as advisers to the Crown we have had the misfortune to lose your Majesty's confidence," said the Prime Minister suavely, "I hope your Majesty will not hesitate to say so. But I am bound to inform you, sir, that should your Majesty be unable to accept the advice now offered, it will be the most painful duty of your Majesty's ministers to tender their resignation."

"I observe," retorted the King tartly, "that whenever you begin reminding me of my 'Majesty' you have always something unpleasant to spring on me! You are treating me now just as you have been treating the Bishops; you will not listen to advice; no, you will not accept amendments, you behave as though you were already a single Chamber Government. You ought to accept amendments! I don't like Free Church Bishops. If they want to become Bishops they can go to the Archimandrite for themselves. I suppose you are making it worth his while?" he added suspiciously.

"Doubtless there will be an arrangement," answered the Premier smoothly. "There again the Archbishop has already helped us. Less than a year ago he made representations to us on the subject, recommending the Archimandrite for a State pension."

"And pray, will that appear in the estimates?"

"There is no reason why it should not appear."

"I have noticed," commented the King, "that if people do an unscrupulous thing in the full light of day, it takes a certain appearance of honesty."

"A very statesmanlike observation, your Majesty," smiled the Prime Minister. "In this matter I may say we are without scruple because our case is unanswerable."

"You shall have my answer," said the King, "when I have had more time to think about it."

With which oblique retort to the Prime Minister's assertion he rose, and the interview terminated.

By this time he was thoroughly tired: he had done a hard morning's work; not only had he been harassed and annoyed, but he had been thinking a great deal more than he usually thought, and his brain ached. But even now his troubles were not ended; just as he turned to go the Minister of the Interior craved audience; and at his first word the King's irritation grew afresh, for here was dismissed controversy cropping up again.

While the King was receiving the Prime Minister his Comptroller-General had not been idle: indeed he never was idle. He had gone straight to the Minister of the Interior and had reported to him the failure of his efforts, for it was this minister who had in the first place come to him. The steeplejack had fallen, so to speak, right into the middle of his department; and with the King's donation coming on the top the catastrophe bulked large. For, be it known, on the order of the day for the morrow's sitting of Parliament was a motion of the Labor Party, directing censure on the Government for having brought pressure to bear on contractors and caused work to be continued upon Government buildings when Labor and Capital were at war. It was nothing to Labor that the hire of the scaffolding used in the repairs was costing the country a considerable sum of money while it stood uselessly waiting about the walls of the Legislature; blacklegs had gone up on it and blacklegs had been pulled down from it; and one particular blackleg had gone up on it and had come down without any pulling whatever—an accident over which Labor was savagely ready to exult and say, "Serve him right!" And how would it be if they saw in their morning papers, on the very day when the motion was down for debate, that the King had gone out of his way to make a handsome donation to the widow? The Minister of the Interior simply could not allow it; yet now word had come to him that his Majesty persisted in his intention. So when the Prime Minister came out the Minister of the Interior went in and put his case to the King, as I have put it here to the reader—only far more persuasively, and ornately, and at very much greater length. He also added to what has already been set forth, as a point making the man a less worthy object of compassion, that according to latest accounts he had gone to his work under the influence of drink.

"So do all steeplejacks," said the King, and quoted the Encyclopedia: "It is only when they are drunk that they can do it. I know." He spoke as though he had tried it.

Before the minister had done the King was really angry. "Mr. Secretary," said he, "I don't care how many strikes there are, or how many Trades Unions, or how many motions of censure from the gentlemen of the Labor Party: they may motion to censure me if they like! The man is dead, and I was unfortunate enough to be a witness of his death. He died in an attempt to do a laudable action." (Here the King was tempted to quote the peroration from his favorite newspaper, but he checked himself: the minister would not have understood.) "His wife," he went on, "is now a widow, and his children are orphans; and if that twenty pounds may not go to them, then I am not master of my own purse-strings, or"—he added by way of finish—"of my own natural feelings and emotions as an ordinary human being."

And before that burst of eloquence the Minister of the Interior was abashed into silence, and retired from the royal presence discomfited.

The King's argument had heated him, like the royal furnace of Nebuchadnezzar, seven times more than he was wont to be heated. He so seldom argued with anybody, still less with his ministers: and here he had been arguing with one or another of them for half the morning. He almost felt as if something had happened to him; a touch of giddiness seized him as he turned to retire to his private apartments; and the thought struck him—if he was as much upset as this over a small side-issue, what would he be like when he had done adding that luster to the constitutional edifice which the nation in its crisis would presently be demanding of him? The wear and tear were going to be considerable.

Circumstance had departed as he retraced his steps to the domestic wing. The lackeys, having done their ceremonial duty, had disappeared: he was free to go unobserved. As he ascended the marble staircase which led from the great hall toward the private apartments he was still thinking of the steeplejack, the man who somehow seemed now to be an emblem of himself. This man, set to the superfluous task of regilding the weathercock of the Legislature, doing it in defiance of master craftsmen and fellow-workmen, lured to do it because the cost of the hiring of the scaffolding had become an expensive charge on the Board of Works, and then, after the custom of the Trade, primed, emboldened, and made drunk to do it, drunk to a point which had brought him to destruction—yes, he was like that man; his temptations, his perils, his essential superfluity were all the same. As he went up the stair he tried to imagine he was the man himself, going up and up, a solitary and uplifted figure, fixing his thoughts on things above in order that he might forget the gulf which yawned below. He took his hand from the balustrade, and gazing upward at the gilt and crystal chandelier suspended from the dome above, so entirely forgot his surroundings for one moment that, missing a step, he lost balance backwards and fell with amazing thoroughness down the full flight of steps till he reached the bottom.